


Last Words

by CuriosityRedux



Series: Dragon Drabbles Berk [19]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hiccstrid - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 22:30:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16752664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CuriosityRedux/pseuds/CuriosityRedux
Summary: What would you do if you thought you were about to die?





	Last Words

**Last Words**

**-**

Hiccup took one numb step forward. Then another. Looping his arms around Astrid’s waist, he clenched his jaw and pulled the struggling girl away from the impenetrable wall of of stones and boulders. “Stop,” he breathed, sliding his hands down to her wrists to restrain her. Something warm and wet smeared across his fingers, and he realized she’d clawed at the rocks until she bled. “You’re hurting yourself.”

He couldn’t see her in the pitch black, but he could feel her shoulders shaking against his chest. Her unsteady breathing echoed off the cave walls. “They don’t know where we are,” she coughed, the dust from the explosion still thick in the air. “ _We_  don’t know where we are and they have our dragons. There’s only so much clean air in here, Hiccup!”

“I know.” He did. He’d spent every moment they’d been buried in the darkness trying to find a solution— an exit or an escape. They had no weapons. No food or water. And not even a sliver of light lent the hope of any of the rounded walls having cracks or weak points. But the minutes were turning into hours, and the only thing they’d manage to do was nearly get themselves killed trying to disturb the avalanche of boulders that had sealed them in. 

He heard her sniff. Pulling her close, he rested his forehead on her shoulder. When her knees gave out, they slowly sank to the stone floor together.

“How long do you think we have?” Her question was hardly a half whisper. 

Hiccup had trailed the tight space with his hands, learned the dimensions of what would probably become their grave. “A day, maybe.”

She shook with a stifled sob. He squeezed her tighter. “It would take them almost that long to get back to Berk.”

He knew. He’d done that math too. Even if the dragons could manage to escape, there was no telling if they could find their riders or alert the village in time. They were probably going to die there. But he wasn’t going to say it. She was already shivering against him. 

“I— I didn’t tell my parents goodbye this morning,” Astrid murmured, her throat sounding tight. “My mom’s been on my case about learning how to run house, so I… I was avoiding her.”

Hiccup tried rocking her, gently moving back and forth like a parent comforting their child. “Shh.” His thumbs made circles on the soft skin of her wrists. “They’ll be okay.”

“Oh gods.” His heart broke at the crack in her voice. “Your  _dad._ ” The thought made him flinch, and for the first time since the explosion, he felt his own impending crash of emotion. 

“Astrid, don’t,” he pleaded, closing his eyes as if he could shut out the image of his father staring at the horizon, waiting for their dragons’ shadows. The rasp of his deep breath through his lungs burned. “I don’t want to think about them.”

They sat tangled together for what could have been minutes or centuries. Eventually she shifted in his arms so she could lay her head against his chest, and he could feel the hot dampness of tears on his shirt. Every beat of his heart against his ribcage felt like the sharp press of a bruise. He pressed a kiss to her crown.

“I always pictured our kids with your eyes.” Her breathy admission was warm against his neck. “Just in case I ever had to be without you.”

His face crumpled. Hiccup sighed and knotted his fingers in her clothes. “Astrid…”

“I had a design planned for a wedding braid.” Her laugh was hollow and mirthless. “I spent a whole night trying it once. When you were on a trip with your dad and I missed you. It looked really nice.”

He tried to picture her poised in front of her mother’s tarnished mirror, her fingers sliding through the most intricate labyrinth of blonde locks he’d ever seen. A lump rose in his throat. Trying to swallow it down, he imagined how it would have glimmered like gold in the firelight, how her cheeks would have turned pink when she caught him staring. His eyes stung.

“What are you doing?” she asked when his hands began groping blindly at the knot of the cord holding her hair bound. 

“I’m never going to see it,” he blurted, the first notes of panic slipping into his explanation. “I’ll never get to see it.” She was mourning the fact that he’d never see her hair at the peak of its elegance— he was realizing that he’d never see it at its simplest. At first, the cord wouldn’t give, but after his tugging drew a soft noise of discomfort from her, she replaced his hands with hers and pulled it out. He felt cool strands of hair brush across his knuckles, and it was like a drop of water to a man dying of thirst.

All the air rushed from his lungs in one sharp exhale. He lifted his fingers to slide through the smooth waves, brought a lock to his lips. In some impossible way, he smelled Berk on her. Chilly sunsets through foggy clouds. The scent of rain on rocks and stinging seawater. And songs sung over honeyed mead in the Great Hall. He could pick out each faint note. 

His hands tangled, knotted, and twisted through her hair. He curled it around his palms. He traced the skin of her scalp, burying his nose behind her ear and gasping for air. But it was too dark, too black. He’d never see the precious metal shades again. When she realized the change that had come over him, she became concerned. Fingers sticky with dried blood, she touched his face and hushed his hysterical breaths. 

“It’s okay. It’s okay, Hiccup." 

But it wasn’t. They weren’t sure who fell asleep first, curled against each other on the hard stone ground. But when the cave’s mouth was blown open, and Stoick the Vast found the teens blue-lipped and barely breathing, Hiccup had one hand firmly holding his intended to his chest, and the other buried in silvery-gold hair.


End file.
